In yet another 'senior moment' Sen. John McCain forgot he suggested the other day we might want to tear down the 9th ward of New Orleans. Apparently this memory lapse occurred less than a week after his initial pronouncement.

Now, I really can't profess to having a great memory myself. I have to keep friends' birthdays in my Outlook calendar so I don't forget. But although I don't claim Sen. McCain as a friend, I do remember his birthday. It's August 29, the day -- the precise day -- that Katrina hit New Orleans, and the image of John McCain with President Bush sharing a birthday cake on the tarmac in Arizona as people in the Gulf drown is burned into my memory as well.

Keith Olbermann reported yesterday on the odd phenomenon of the McCain-media love affair. No one is sure why it happens, but it seems nothing the old guy does receives any scrutiny, and whatever he says is accepted as gospel by the traditional media.

Jon Stewart also covered the media's strange affinity for McCain and his visit to New Orleans this week, and touched on the second silliest media-created controversy -- Flag-Pin-Gate, wherein Senator Obama must explain why he's not wearing a flag pin, although Hillary (she's a girl) and McCain (he probably forgot), do not. (The first silliest, of course, being Abercrombie-and-Fitch-Gate, where three random guys wearing similar t-shirts stood behind Obama at a rally and became instant media celebs.)

The McCain-media conjugality can't be explained away by anything as simple as that he's a nice guy. He's not. McCain has a reputation with both the left and the right for being nasty to colleagues, adversaries, children, voters, his wife, the press, and foreign countries. I haven't seen any evidence of puppy-kicking, but it honestly wouldn't shock me.

I'm not sure why the media gives McCain a free pass. I expect it has something to do with media ownership and the Republicans, combined with a fear of getting blasted for taking a veteran to task. Of course, they allowed JK's service to be trashed daily, but he's not a Republican, so I guess they figured it was OK.

Bush got the same bye from an acquiescent media in '04. A frat boy cheerleader with a long history of failure, he was coddled by the media nonetheless. The big question is if we'll allow the same thing to happen in '08, or if we've learned to look past the media advocacy of Republican candidates and take the reports for what they're worth.

We can hope that McCain's free ride will end when we have a nominee, and that the media will finally concede that the Straight Talk Express has gone off the rails.

Here's some recommended reading for Matthews, Scarborough, Stephanopoulos and the rest of the MSM talking heads. McCain's Free Ride breaks down the media creation of a straight talking maverick, and gets to the truth behind the fiction, including the top 10 media myths about John McCain.